Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed impossible to
everybody that the thread of life could be drawn out so thin, and yet
not break. The sick man lay unutterably weak and spent, kept alive by
morphia and by drinks, which he sipped slowly. He was only half
conscious--a thin strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death
with the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him.
Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him
now. Every morning Gerald went into the room, hoping to find his father
passed away at last. Yet always he saw the same transparent face, the
same dread dark hair on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate
dark eyes, which seemed to be decomposing into formless darkness,
having only a tiny grain of vision within them.
And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed
through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to
resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its
clangour, and making him mad.
Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with life, gleaming
in his blondness. The gleaming blondness of his strange, imminent being
put the father into a fever of fretful irritation. He could not bear to
meet the uncanny, downward look of Gerald's blue eyes. But it was only
for a moment. Each on the brink of departure, the father and son looked
at each other, then parted.
For a long time Gerald preserved a perfect sang froid, he remained
quite collected. But at last, fear undermined him. He was afraid of
some horrible collapse in himself. He had to stay and see this thing
through. Some perverse will made him watch his father drawn over the
borders of life. And yet, now, every day, the great red-hot stroke of
horrified fear through the bowels of the son struck a further
inflammation. Gerald went about all day with a tendency to cringe, as
if there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the nape of his
neck.
There was no escape--he was bound up with his father, he had to see him
through. And the father's will never relaxed or yielded to death. It
would have to snap when death at last snapped it,--if it did not
persist after a physical death. In the same way, the will of the son
never yielded. He stood firm and immune, he was outside this death and
this dying.
It was a trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his father slowly
dissolve and disappear in death, without once yielding his will,
without once relenting before the omnipotence of death. Like a Red
Indian undergoing torture, Gerald would experience the whole process of
slow death without wincing or flinching. He even triumphed in it. He
somehow WANTED this death, even forced it. It was as if he himself were
dealing the death, even when he most recoiled in horror. Still, he
would deal it, he would triumph through death.